Blake Butler—
“A film ought to be like a pebble in your shoe.” Lars von Trier
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Meta
uh: if you couldn’t take off your shoes.
uh: if you couldn’t take off your shoes.
one can hope
one can hope
for such films and such shoes. such.
for such films and such shoes. such.
So I’m supposed to hate films and then stop on the sidewalk, take off my shoe and jiggle films out of my shoe?
So I’m supposed to hate films and then stop on the sidewalk, take off my shoe and jiggle films out of my shoe?
I THINK A GOOD FILM SHOULD BE LIKE A GOOD GASTRO-INTESTINAL DISEASE: YOU ARE VIOLENTLY REMINDED OF IT EVERY FEW MINUTES AND SOMETIMES YOUR ANUS BLEEDS>
I THINK A GOOD FILM SHOULD BE LIKE A GOOD GASTRO-INTESTINAL DISEASE: YOU ARE VIOLENTLY REMINDED OF IT EVERY FEW MINUTES AND SOMETIMES YOUR ANUS BLEEDS>
Agreed. Books too, for that matter.
Agreed. Books too, for that matter.
Hah! yes.
Hah! yes.
The problem that I’ve realized that I sort of have with LvT, and more directly, his “in-your-face” attitude (vs. his fairly subtle films), is that he is a director that is obviously really aiming for affect, and that is the number 1 thing that I look for in films, but he’s still so wrapped up in traditional “art house” modes of cinema (I think it’s particularly revealing that he spear-headed the Dogme 95 movement, which I think was him ostensibly trying to break out of his own shell [and more or less failing]) (even in Antichrist he dedicates the film to Tarkovsky [which, of course, can be read in different ways, but ultimately, despite Tarkovsky’s penchant for the emotive status film can inspire, the materiality of film itself ((paralleled to a writing community as THE LEVEL OF THE SENTENCE, or the physical materials making up the book, etc., etc.)) never much concerned him]) that he cannot break free enough to push towards pure (or purist) affect in the way many French filmmakers have done (c.f. Martine Beugnet, Nicole Brenez) & the way many “experimental” filmmakers constantly do.
He is moving, but sometimes you have to question “at what cost” and “why,” and how do I need to react to this, can this affect be attained when I am not in the diegesis of the narrative, etc. For films like La Vie Nouvelle and Lecons de Tenebre you could take a scene out of the context of the narrative that loosely threads the films together, and you can view it, and because it is spawning affect on a material (corporael) level , you can still feel it as deeply as you can in context. Whereas with von Trier, his work is always very dependent upon the whole (i.e. his entire book is more important than his sentences). The most affecting scenes in Antichrist (I am using as my primary example of LvT affect because you’ve mentioned your familiarity with it) (namely Gainsbourg mutilating herself, the revelation of the mother distorting her son’s feet, Dafoe coming blood) are lighter, more as pure shock/shlock when divorced from the emotive narrative the film as a whole inspires.
The problem that I’ve realized that I sort of have with LvT, and more directly, his “in-your-face” attitude (vs. his fairly subtle films), is that he is a director that is obviously really aiming for affect, and that is the number 1 thing that I look for in films, but he’s still so wrapped up in traditional “art house” modes of cinema (I think it’s particularly revealing that he spear-headed the Dogme 95 movement, which I think was him ostensibly trying to break out of his own shell [and more or less failing]) (even in Antichrist he dedicates the film to Tarkovsky [which, of course, can be read in different ways, but ultimately, despite Tarkovsky’s penchant for the emotive status film can inspire, the materiality of film itself ((paralleled to a writing community as THE LEVEL OF THE SENTENCE, or the physical materials making up the book, etc., etc.)) never much concerned him]) that he cannot break free enough to push towards pure (or purist) affect in the way many French filmmakers have done (c.f. Martine Beugnet, Nicole Brenez) & the way many “experimental” filmmakers constantly do.
He is moving, but sometimes you have to question “at what cost” and “why,” and how do I need to react to this, can this affect be attained when I am not in the diegesis of the narrative, etc. For films like La Vie Nouvelle and Lecons de Tenebre you could take a scene out of the context of the narrative that loosely threads the films together, and you can view it, and because it is spawning affect on a material (corporael) level , you can still feel it as deeply as you can in context. Whereas with von Trier, his work is always very dependent upon the whole (i.e. his entire book is more important than his sentences). The most affecting scenes in Antichrist (I am using as my primary example of LvT affect because you’ve mentioned your familiarity with it) (namely Gainsbourg mutilating herself, the revelation of the mother distorting her son’s feet, Dafoe coming blood) are lighter, more as pure shock/shlock when divorced from the emotive narrative the film as a whole inspires.
a good film should be like a tick on a ballsack/vagina lip.
i’m sorry.
a good film should stay with you like a very personal memory of riding a camel through the desert, where the camel and you are both close to death, and the camel has some water in its hump, and you have a straw going into the camels hump, and you have to decide to drink the water yourself or not (and you really care about this camel, a lot; he’s like an uncle), and you end up drinking the water killing the camel.
really though?
a good film should be like a tick on a ballsack/vagina lip.
i’m sorry.
a good film should stay with you like a very personal memory of riding a camel through the desert, where the camel and you are both close to death, and the camel has some water in its hump, and you have a straw going into the camels hump, and you have to decide to drink the water yourself or not (and you really care about this camel, a lot; he’s like an uncle), and you end up drinking the water killing the camel.
really though?
my feet are so tough they crush pebbles
you may call me the destroyer of films
my feet are so tough they crush pebbles
you may call me the destroyer of films
stories are blisters on the verge of breaking open.
stories are blisters on the verge of breaking open.
Mike,
I understand what you are saying, but I think we need Lars Von Trier. He’s willing to go places that a lot of people won’t. Some of it might be shock value, but some is brilliant. The end of the film is luminous and the images in the last half hour (aside from the mutilations) and the editing are wonderfully developed. When he gives you Dogville and the Five Obstructions and Dancer in Dark in one decade, it seems he’s doing pretty good. Paul Schrader said of Cassavetes in an American Mavericks doc. that maybe only 20% of what he was doing worked but that 20% would be better than anything you’ve ever seen. I feel that way about Lars. That 20% stays with me, whereas such safe, lauded directors such as Robert Zemeckis, Penny and Rob Marshall, Spielberg and Christopher Nolan kind of fade away after a few days.
Mike,
I understand what you are saying, but I think we need Lars Von Trier. He’s willing to go places that a lot of people won’t. Some of it might be shock value, but some is brilliant. The end of the film is luminous and the images in the last half hour (aside from the mutilations) and the editing are wonderfully developed. When he gives you Dogville and the Five Obstructions and Dancer in Dark in one decade, it seems he’s doing pretty good. Paul Schrader said of Cassavetes in an American Mavericks doc. that maybe only 20% of what he was doing worked but that 20% would be better than anything you’ve ever seen. I feel that way about Lars. That 20% stays with me, whereas such safe, lauded directors such as Robert Zemeckis, Penny and Rob Marshall, Spielberg and Christopher Nolan kind of fade away after a few days.
oh don’t get me wrong, i’ll champion the first half of von trier’s career for days, but the stuff he’s done this millenium just don’t do it for me. he certainly goes places, but they are places that my personal film-directing-heroes have already gone many times, and in a much more honest manner (alain robbe-grillet, jess franco, philippe grandrieux, hisayasu sato, jean rollin, andrzej zulawski, etc.). saying he’s better than most american mavericks, to me, means absolutely nothing. see, i kind of think that von trier is the safe “unsafe” director, if that makes sense. he goes out on a whim in terms of sensational(ist) subject manner in a very controlled, “art house” manner. that’s fine, he does that well and i appreciate that, but there are so many people doing things with film better.
oh don’t get me wrong, i’ll champion the first half of von trier’s career for days, but the stuff he’s done this millenium just don’t do it for me. he certainly goes places, but they are places that my personal film-directing-heroes have already gone many times, and in a much more honest manner (alain robbe-grillet, jess franco, philippe grandrieux, hisayasu sato, jean rollin, andrzej zulawski, etc.). saying he’s better than most american mavericks, to me, means absolutely nothing. see, i kind of think that von trier is the safe “unsafe” director, if that makes sense. he goes out on a whim in terms of sensational(ist) subject manner in a very controlled, “art house” manner. that’s fine, he does that well and i appreciate that, but there are so many people doing things with film better.
I agree about the safe ‘unsafe’ thing, but saying something is more honest is pretty relative. Because of his reputation he gets the big stars and hence more money for his films and more publicity. But so did Kubrick. Not that Von Trier is Kubrick, no one is. I’m curious to check out the directors you mentioned.
I agree about the safe ‘unsafe’ thing, but saying something is more honest is pretty relative. Because of his reputation he gets the big stars and hence more money for his films and more publicity. But so did Kubrick. Not that Von Trier is Kubrick, no one is. I’m curious to check out the directors you mentioned.